Our chicks moved out of the brooder house and now they’re comfortably on pasture while they finish growing up. A few more months into the summer and we’ll see their first eggs and then we’ll move them into the chicken house.

We move their pen every day or so to a fresh spot for sanitation and some fresh protein. Did you know that chickens will eat grass? Yep, some. Not like a sheep or anything, but some. They’ll also eat just about any fruit, vegetable, or bread scrap from your garden or kitchen. We also give ours some rice or pasta leftovers–they love leftover mashed potatoes! Much like feeding your dog table scraps, we just stick to a 15% rule. No more than 15% of their diet can be anything other than vegetables or bagged feed.

If you look close, you can kind of see that their ground is kind of "worn out" inside the pen...you can also see that we used part of our Christmas float to reinforce it a few weeks ago.

When we move the pen, the kids job is to make sure all the chickens keep moving forward with the pen, and that no one gets stuck under the edges. The water-er sits on a little “platform” made inside the corner by the cross-bracing so it can slid along without being pulled out. Sometimes we pull out the feeders and sometimes we just slid it along and they slid along when the edge catches them.

Mr. Fix-It has been known, on occasion, to move the whole thing by hand. I have never been know to do that. We usually use the Ranger or the mower.

One thing about having them outside like this is that their food is exposed to more moisture, etc. so we don’t use a large feeder out there. We would have to pull it out and move it constantly, for one. And if there’s an unexpected thunderstorm while I’m at work and it’s not far enough under the enclosed section, there goes a whole bucket of feed. We just use black rubber feed pans (which are used for the sheep during lambing season!) and fill them up in the morning with about 1 day of feed.

Besides, it’s good for the kids to have regular, every day chores. {grin}

The Cowboy is always up for helping out. Mr. Fix-It just tells him to get his boots on and catch up. He never asks why, never complains, nothing.

I had a fascinating discussion about farming and food choices at dinner on Saturday night with Jules, Tracey, and Amy. It got me all excited again about ways to use the farm and this blog to teach people about sustainability and stewardship. It reminded me that people really do want to know, and really do want to make good decisions and choices for their families…and maybe even get involved. (Backyard chickens anyone?)

So I’m considering doing some homesteading interviews and maybe some farming question-answer posts. I’m even kicking around the idea of a few simple farming and livestock “lesson” pages that parents could use with their kids (especially in combination with a farm field trip!)

Do you have any farm or animal questions you’d love to ask?